Business isn’t always about numbers. Actually, it rarely is. It’s about people, and emotion. What about the dollars? The cash flow? The share price? Don’t kid yourself. Those are the by-products, the results. Anyone who is truly sophisticated about business recognizes this essential truth.
You can throw a lot of money around. Say you’re Pepsi and you’re trying to prove your relevance to a new generation that isn’t yet a Pepsi generation. You hire Kendall Jenner and create a TV commercial that tries to connect drinking soda with timely issues like multiculturalism and police relations. And . . . it fails, miserably. It feels forced. It falls flat.
Related: Heineken’s Antidote To That Pepsi Kendall Jenner Ad
Or you can take a different kind of risk. You can open up a Starbucks in ravaged and underserved Ferguson, Missouri. You can expose yourself to ridicule (that community really needs a $4 latte?), but persevere to create jobs and provide a foundation of stability in a neighborhood with far too little of it. And rather than crow about it with TV commercials, you can open other stores in overlooked neighborhoods, while also hiring tens of thousands of veterans and military family members, as well as refugees. And guess what? All this authentic do-goodism doesn’t end up hurting the bottom line. It improves it.
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the early-rate deadline, May 3.
